Posts Tagged ‘karma’

You know what I mean. You walk through a room (or lean heavily on crutches, whatevs) and your eyes swing from side to side, noting important details.

Okay, little Spiderman with the slightly larger yellow eyes is on the floor in front of the couch. Bunny is sprawled in the corner. That tiny piece of impossibly important shoestring is on the bookshelf.

I try to store these nuggets of information so that I can casually and gracefully throw out answers to the constant pleas for assistance to find shit. Scanning is a great tool, if your memory complies. But what the hell do you do when your kid is holding a spiderman and asks for a ‘web zipper’? By the time it takes you to work out that he wants the five inches of thread connected to window suckers, by the time you actually manage to find it, just as you thrust your fist victoriously in the air, your kid says, ‘Where’s my Spiderman? I just had him.’

I’m constantly saying, ‘I don’t know. You JUST had him/it/her. You need to try to remember where you put stuff down, take some responsibility for your toys. Everyone would be happier if we all remembered where our own stuff was.’

They just look at me. ‘But where is my Spiderman? You help me?’

Increasingly, my help looks like guiding them through the process of what it means to search for a missing toy – checking under the couch, thinking about where we last played with it, etc. But no matter what I do, the flood of almost constant requests to find shit never really tapers off. They are getting really good at ‘finding’ stuff they aren’t currently looking for, though.

‘Oh look, here is The Other Twin’s Special Thing! I found it! Other Twin, I found your thing!’ This usually results in them moving it from a visible area to some other zone of lost toys, and thus the circle goes round and round.

Something nice happened today. I was at playgroup, sat in the corner with our regular ‘helper’ (see: staff member who is ALWAYS with one or other of the babies, making it possible for them to experience crafts, playing, riding bikes, etc one-to-one), a childminder I am friendly with, and a pile of children none of us knew.

A lady started approaching us, doing that half head tilt thing like she’s seen someone familiar and is trying to figure out where she knows them from. Problem is, she was looking at me.

She zeroed in on us and crouched down next to me. I smiled. Hey, you never know who is going to be your next new friend, right? (Yes, I am as saccharine sweet as I sound. I like meeting people, okay? So sue me.)

She says, ‘I think it’s you.’ I admit that non-plussed me. I mean, on the one hand, she is absolutely right. It is me. Who else would I be? She’s beaming at me and I get the distinct feeling she might be going in for a hug.

Before I can say, ‘Are you on glue?’ she rushes on..

‘Last winter I was in the big indoor carpark in town. I had four poorly children with me. My twins were sick, my eldest had an infected leg, and her friend was crying. We’d walked all the way to the machine to pay, I started putting money in, and you gave me .10 because I was short. It is you, isn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, that was me.’

‘I wanted to come tell you thank you. Thank you so much. I was having the worst day ever, and you made things a little easier, and…well….thank you.’

That made me feel warm inside. And also a little stoked that I’d helped another twin mama without realizing.

I sometimes do little things to help people. Because other people have done things for me, and even tiny things can make a big difference. Never do I expect to see or hear from these people again.

In fact, I’d forgotten all about the harassed looking mother who was short on money. But here it is, a year later, and she recognized my face.

That made me feel powerfully good, and even more committed to doing the tiny things I do in the hopes that they can help someone else out. Because, let’s be real here, I count on the people – often strangers – who have gone out of their way to help me or my babies.

We should all look out for each other a little more, because you never know when you’ll need someone to look out for you. Or when one of your random acts of kindness will turn into a great conversation with a wonderful woman, a year down the road.

I’ve discovered a unique way to put off writing: going around to other people wishing them good luck! I know I would be cheered by other people doing the same to me, and it feels weirdly good dropping in on stranger’s blogs saying hi.

If you are doing nano, I suggest you do the same to other blogs. Jesus, imagine if this was some sort of karmic chain letter – if we all did it to three people, eventually our names would rise to the top of the chain and we’d get lots of ‘good luck’ comments back?

Somehow I don’t think it works that way.

Still, 2100 words so far – along with a new 2009 diary, a frozen right hand, a new blog header, many Facebook conversations, an hour of really bad tv, and some leftover Halloween candy. Not too bad.